How to choose a good E-commerce hosting plan for your e-commerce site

Deciding on the best e-Commerce hosting plan for your online store is not a decision to be taken lightly. A solid hosting solution ensures your customers have a smooth shopping experience and your online store won’t be a victim of its own success with performance slowdowns — and disappointed users.

According to a KissMetrics’ report, almost 50% of web users expect to wait no more than two seconds for a site to load, and if it takes three seconds, they will completely abandon the website, says the Kissmetrics report. As noted by the same research, almost 80 percent of online shoppers who feel the website has poor performance say they won’t visit the site again to make a purchase, and approximately 44 percent would share their bad shopping experience with their friends and family.

How to make the right e-Commerce hosting decision from the start?

There are nine important of factors that you need to consider when evaluating which solution is best for you.

9 eCommerce hosting plan factors to consider

Support for your eCommerce and CMS software.

Control over your software.

Database capabilities.

Support for high database requests.

Performance to handle high traffic.

Performance to support a high order volume.

Security of customer information.

Level of administrative complexity.

Access to view error and log files.

Let’s break them down

Support for your eCommerce and CMS software

There is a wide selection of eCommerce and CMS software available: OpenCart, PrestaShop, Magento, OsCommerce, ZenCart, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and DrupalCommerce — just to name a few. The one you settled on must be able to support your online store growth. This is to void having to switch to another along the line, which often times is a costly exercise. That said, before you take the final dive on a software to use, investigate each one in detail:

What’s the average overhead cost for an eCommerce site?

What add-ons will you need to purchase to build the store you want?

Is there a demo you can play with to determine if you like (or dislike) the admin interface?

How are the user reviews?

What We Recommend: Check the server requirements of your chosen software. It will help you to know what to look for in a hosting plan so that you don’t run into compatibility issues along the line.

Control over your software (e.g., WordPress, PHP, MySQL)

An eCommerce website is more advanced than an ordinary and simple informational website. For example, you’ll need more control over software updates so that your site doesn’t run into compatibility issues. You also may need multiple MySQL databases — something that a managed WordPress hosting plan, for example, won’t allow.

Additionally, it’s possible you will need to install a plugin that is restricted/blacklisted on managed WordPress hosting. And you may need access to manage and edit files directly in the browser — again, something that a managed WordPress hosting plan isn’t designed for.

What We Recommend: Look for an eCommerce hosting plan that doesn’t limit your ability to customize the software you’re running. As mentioned, managed WordPress hosting plans are great for most WordPress sites, but you may need more control for an eCommerce store.

Database capabilities of an eCommerce hosting plan

Databases are important for most if not all for dynamic websites, they are at the heart of an eCommerce website. It’s where all your product details are stored. That being said, database support is one thing you should consider when choosing an eCommerce hosting plan. When evaluating potential options, look for details about supported databases (to make sure it’s compatible with the software you want to use) and database limits.

What We Recommend: To ensure you don’t run into any performance issues or resource limits, you should understand the expected number of files and size of your database before selecting a host.

Support for high database requests

Thousands of customers will browse and search for products at the same time, putting a lot of strain on the product database. You need a hosting plan that will instantly respond to those requests. Look at the technical specs of the plans you’re evaluating to determine if they’re capable of meeting your site’s requirements.

What We Recommend: Choose an eCommerce hosting plan that has high processing power and an optimized concurrent database connection limit.

Performance to handle high traffic

You have to make sure your hosting plan is capable of handling increased traffic that comes with the growth of your online store. If you’re using basic shared hosting, you might become a victim of the “bad neighbor effect.” This happens when websites with high traffic consume a lot of resources and impact other websites using the same shared resources.

What We Recommend: When you’re evaluating potential eCommerce hosting plans, select one that provides an isolated environment with dedicated resources. This also ensures greater privacy and security for your customer data.

Performance to support a high order volume

During peak shopping periods, thousands of orders may come through your eCommerce store at the same time. Your hosting plan should be capable of handling this demand. Unlike shared hosting, an isolated environment with dedicated resources will be able to handle this. When evaluating eCommerce hosting plans, look for clarification between their shared and dedicated resources.

Security of customer information

E-Commerce is a customer-driven business, so protecting buyer information is critical. Ensure your hosting plan offers SSL (Secure Socket Layer) by default. SSL, in combination with HTTPS, protects the information that flows from the customer’s browser to a website. In the case of eCommerce, this is more important for pages where credit card numbers, account details, and other personal information may be present.

What We Recommend: Invest in an extended validation (EV) SSL certificate. These certificates require additional verification to confirm the identity of your business, adding another level of security, credibility, and trust to your eCommerce store.

Level of administrative complexity

A growing eCommerce business usually leads to more hosting complexity. This additional burden of server management and administration consumes time, money and other resources that inevitably impact your productivity. When evaluating hosting plans, look at how you’re expected to manage it. Are you given an easy-to-use visual interface? A complicated set of option screens? Or is it a terminal with a command line?

What We Recommend: Keep the focus on your business by choosing an eCommerce hosting plan that offers an intuitive control panel, e.g., cPanel, so you’re not wasting your time and resources on learning how to be a server administrator.

Access to view error and log files

Bad things do happen sometimes. If your eCommerce website runs into issues, you or your web developer should be able to access error and log files to quickly investigate and debug the problem.

What We Recommend: A modern control panel, such as cPanel, gives you quick access to these files so that you can identify problems with your hosting.

Our Final Recommendation

An eCommerce website is usually more complex to build and manage than a simple informational website. By choosing a hosting plan that offers a combination of dedicated resources with a simple administration, dependable security and the ability to support growth, you can build an online store that exceeds customer expectations.

From all the foregoing, we think NoworryHost’s Advance Hosting Plan will suffice for medium to large eCommerce websites. But if you are having a larger e-commerce website, like Konga in mind? Check out HBT’s Dedicated Hosting Plans.

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